Local News

Local GOP planning Lincoln Day Dinner for Feb. 17

County-level election activities starting

FORT MORGAN — — The Morgan County Republicans are gearing up for another election season and getting ready for their big annual fundraiser, the Lincoln Day Dinner.

That event will be held at 6 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Country Steak-Out, with former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez as the keynote speaker.

The Morgan County Republican Women also will sell jewelry and offer hors d'oeuvres during cocktails before the dinner at 7 p.m.

Tickets cost $25 and are available from any Morgan County Republican Central Committee member.

The committee raised $2,580 at the local political party's 2013 gala in November, Chairman Vivianne Lorenzini told the committee members at their meeting Monday night.

"The gala was pretty well attended, with about 80 people," she said.

But fundraising is not the committee's only focus.

Lorenzini pointed out that the Republican caucuses for the 2014 primary and general elections will be held March 4, and training for volunteers and coordinators would be held Feb. 24 at the Morgan County Administration Building.

She explained that there would be four locations for the caucuses, with precinct 1 meeting in Wiggins, precinct 2 in Weldona, precincts 3 to 11 in Fort Morgan and precincts 12 to 17 in Brush.

"Last year, so many people wound up coming to the caucuses, mostly because of the big presidential year, that this year, we wanted to make some changes based on what we learned," Lorenzini explained.

She said the main thing was having cluster meetings to better prepare and then having clearer precinct maps available so voters understood what was going on and how to participate in the caucuses, as well as how county and state assemblies would work.

"We need to educate people better," Lorenzini said.

Morgan County Clerk and Recorder Connie Ingmire, a Republican, said she thought that sounded like a good plan.

County Treasurer Bob Sagel said he thought that would help eliminate "most of the confusion from last time" at local caucuses.

Lorenzini and Ingmire went over the overall election calendar with the local Republicans.

In order to participate in the Republican precinct caucuses, voters would need to make sure their voter registration was updated by Feb. 3.

That's also the first day for minor party candidates to start circulating petitions to be included at the caucuses.

The precinct caucuses would include the selection of 170 total delegates to go to the county assembly, which would be held at 9 a.m. March 22 at Fort Morgan Middle School.

From there, 25 delegates would be chosen to go to the state assembly April 11-12.

The local Republicans asked Ingmire what was being done to prevent voter fraud in the upcoming election.

She said that the computer system that checks voter registration was linked not only across Colorado but from state to state. That should make it extremely difficult to cast more than one regular, non-provisional ballot.

"If someone's caught voting more than once, they will be prosecuted," she said.

They also asked the county clerk about the savings created by mail-in-ballot elections.

Ingmire said it was frustrating that with a mail-in-ballot election that they still needed to have polling places open on Election Day, which drove up the costs.

"We're not really saving any money," she said. "It's costing just as much."

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